Dear Diary,
“Mirror, mirror, who is the most beautiful, dearest and cleverest in the world?” incessantly asked an egocentric queen of a mirror hanging on the wall in a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, which, truth be told, a famous character from a certain country where it’s been customary for more than one century to steal everything from everyone swiped a couple of decades later. And although the aforementioned queen’s character should be both repulsive and comical to us (and in childhood it was), many of us – some secretly, others openly – inside are nothing other than that very queen. After all, for the majority of the day our attention is truly directed not at the outer world, although that’s exactly what it seems to us, but at a mirror held before our nose in our imagination, in which we carefully examine our reflection and incessantly ask ourselves one and the same question – “So, am I cool enough yet?” And speaking of reflection, I mean not merely our appearance. Our inner mirror’s reflection is also formed by our social, material, family and other statuses, the objects surrounding us, people and everything else. “Yeah, you’re cool enough,” our mirror tells us, “but the people around you don’t know it well enough yet.” And here Facebook and Instagram rush to our aid – look how cool I am! I climbed a very, very tall mountain! I ordered a very, very large pizza! I bought an expensive, expensive car! I took a photo with a very, very famous person! And after a burst of photos illustrating all this, our inner mirror finally lets us breathe, confirming that now we are truly the coolest of all to ourselves. Unfortunately, the breathing doesn’t last particularly long, and already after a week, a day, or an hour we’re searching for new ways to first prove to ourselves, and then to the world, that we are the absolute coolest. Although in reality the proof to the world is needed by us only to strengthen that proof to ourselves even further.
I believe, but while reading the above lines, a flock of famous and not-so-famous people leaped through my imagination, for whom the most fitting and life-activity-honoring monument would be in exactly such a pose – with a proudly raised mirror turned toward themselves in hand. But here the most important thing isn’t to erect monuments in imagination for those around you, but to answer yourself – how much does your own mirror interfere with you walking through life with dignity and lightness? How much time, energy and resources do I burn solely to keep being cool to myself? After all, even being in a room you don’t like or with a person who doesn’t satisfy you, the majority of the discomfort is again caused by your own mirror, saying that at this moment you are not cool enough and the fault for that seemingly falls on the walls or people surrounding you at that moment.
So the ability to put that mirror aside for at least an hour, turn your attention outward and stop staring at your own reflection before your nose and admiring it is, I’d say, a small but very much needed life gift. If only because the lightness that embraces you at that moment is incomparably lighter than the lightness that embraces you when you once again prove to yourself that you are very, very cool.
Have a cool weekend! And cool reflections in your mirrors, if for various reasons you don’t want to or can’t put them down.
p.s. the essay was born yesterday, bubbling in the Žalgiris Arena pool jacuzzi, from inner pain that I’m so cool, perhaps even the coolest, yet I can’t take a selfie and post it to Facebook – it would look very uncool if I started taking selfies there… :-)
